


Paint the Roses Black

by juuheizou



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop & Tattoo Parlor, Asexual Character, Asexuality, Autistic Suzuya Juuzou, Canon Disabled Character, Canon Trans Character, Concerts, First Aid, First Meetings, Florist Mutsuki Tooru, Fluff, Getting Together, Language of Flowers, M/M, Mild Blood and Injury, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Kissing, Roses, Squishes, Suzuya's stitches are tattoos and piercings, Tattoo Artist Suzuya Juuzou, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:40:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22134934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juuheizou/pseuds/juuheizou
Summary: “I’m not buying anything,” they said with a smile. Under the corner of their lower lip, another pair of studs, exactly like the ones in their cheek, and on the same side, too. And either they didn’t understand that what they were doing was loitering, or they didn’t expect Mutsuki to do anything about it. “You can go.” Mutsuki hoped he didn’t look as ready to roll over and comply as he felt.“Um, that’s not… I’m going… I’m going to have to… ask you… to…” They just stared at him, unblinking, with a disarmingly calm smile on their face, as he struggled. His own gaze jumped everywhere but back at their eyes. If he looked up again, he would freeze, completely.In their lap, they had a drawing pad, open to a pencil sketch of yellow, red, and white chrysanthemums. At least, Mutsuki could guess they were the three different colors in stock, from the shading. “Those are really good,” he caught himself murmuring. //Suzuya is enamored with the timid florist next to his tattoo studio and Mutsuki is that timid florist who's all too eager to be coaxed to the dark side by the cheerful tattoo artist who comes into his work to draw their flowers.
Relationships: Mutsuki Tooru/Suzuya Juuzou, Suzuya Juuzou/Mutsuki Tooru
Comments: 7
Kudos: 18





	1. The Boy Next Door

Maybe he hadn’t been counting on his phone ringing at 6:47 and being asked to pick up a 7:00 o’clock shift on a day he was _supposed_ to close. It had kind of woken him up before his alarm and given him two seconds to pull himself together before having to speak to Haise without sounding half-asleep. And if he was really being honest with himself, as he ran to the bus stop in the autumn chill, he could feel a visceral craving for something hotter and more substantial in his stomach than a lone grab-and-go yogurt.

But Urie probably had somewhere important to be, and Mutsuki was fine with covering for him. Better he take the burden than someone else have to. And by now, having worked at Peony for Your Thoughts since it opened, he was used to the early surprise calls and rushed mornings. Such was the price of being Haise’s model hireling. The only one who never missed a call and never rejected a shift.

Wherever Urie was, that morning, he went there before he had the chance to fill any orders or make an arrangement of anything in cold storage. Mutsuki had to tell himself it was okay. He could put everything out, throw together something for the display vases, and hope no one came in looking for a more artistic eye than he could offer.

Saiko, who he became more and more convinced had somehow hacked the CCTVs with her home computer with every uncanny appearance, showed up right after he had swept, mopped, cleaned the restroom, washed the windows, and stocked the sales floor. He was toward the end of counting the morning drawer when the electronic bell over the door made a musical beep, marking her entry just in time to not help him.

But at least she brought coffee, pastries, and what looked like fried egg on rice to-go, from the café around the block. She didn’t always have her priorities straight, but she had been trying, lately. He couldn’t stay mad at her for the lack of help opening. Not when the still-hot paperboard cup of rice was for him.

Though he worried about bringing enough customers in, about Haise having to stress about keeping the shop afloat, Mutsuki couldn’t help but be a little perversely glad it was a slow day. He and Saiko ate breakfast and chattered about books and manga, shows and games he hesitated to admit liking as much as she did, uninterrupted.

Shirazu rode up with his pickup full of fresh supplies an hour or two into their shift. Tooru made them his project for the day. Every spare minute between customers, he spent cutting bundles of helenium and heliopsis, chrysanthemums and candytuft, for cold storage. It would have gone a lot quicker if Saiko helped him instead of falling asleep at the counter, but he pushed that to the back of his mind and laid his cardigan over her shoulders, upon realizing she had in fact fallen asleep.

Among the everyday customers, said project was interrupted when a family came in about a funeral arrangement. Mutsuki tried Urie’s cell twice, but ultimately pretended Urie had a backlog of appointments and would contact them when he had an available time slot. He couldn’t bring himself to tell the truth, afraid he might hurt their feelings or bring a bad review to the shop. They gave him their contact information and he made a note for Urie with every patch of negative space filled in with exclamation points. He liked to think they would raise the odds over 50-50 that Urie would get on that, next time he came in. Parties like weddings and funerals made up a huge portion of their revenue.

Sometime after noon, the slow _ping-pong!_ of the door woke Saiko up with such a start; she almost fell backward and took her stool down with her. Mutsuki, by that time, had finished backstocking their new supplies and moved onto tending the flowers out on the floor. Changing the sugar water they lived in, combining the tubes that had been picked off to the point of looking barren since he opened, clipping any wilted leaves or blooms.

“Hey. You work here?” a customer approached him and asked, before he could finish sweeping the fallen petals off the floor. Mutsuki set his broom aside, turned to them, and nodded. “So if I wanted to give these flowers to a girl, would it say the right thing?” They looked from him to the white camellias, on their own, in one of Mutsuki’s clumsily improvised display vases.

“I think so.” Sasaki would be ashamed of his salesmanship. He himself was ashamed of it. But would it have been that much better to act confident while he steered a customer wrong? “Camellias make a great gift.”

“Got any better colors?”

“Um, you don’t like the white?” They raised an eyebrow at him as if it should have been obvious. “We, uh, we get them in pink?” Not far enough from white, apparently. The customer did not look impressed. “And we have these bicolor ones.” White mottled with red. “Over here, we have red.” If there was a nice way to say ‘please pick something because I have no idea what to tell you,’ he would have said it.

“I’ll take some of those.” Red. One of the deeper, darker reds. Mutsuki thought they looked beautiful. But that sure seemed forward, to give someone. He would have backed away, if not made himself scarce, if someone came up to him with a blood red bouquet. It was the customer’s funeral, though; he supposed. “Now, what can I put with it? I kinda want it to look… happy. You know what I mean?”

“Um… alright. Candytuft makes a good filler, this time of year.” Mutsuki showed him to the pyramid of plastic tube-like vases they kept all theirs in. Candytuft symbolized indifference, but unless their date was someone with the same nerdy side interests as him, it didn’t matter. Like he told them, it made a good filler.

“Anything else?”

“If you want more color, we have celosia.” In every color from red, orange, yellow to fuchsia and mauve. “Or, we have Russian sage, here.” Silvery lavender might go nicely with red. “Are any of these catching your eye?”

“Eh. Not really… What about these?” Sweet alyssum. That, the customer wanted in white. With the camellias, it might look kind of like a seasonal twist on the classic combination of roses and baby’s breath even he couldn’t mess up. Mutsuki had completely overlooked the white, purple, and pink cluster blooms. He tried not to agonize over how useless he was as a surrogate florist.

“Excellent choice,” he said with a smile. He felt guilty, sending someone home with a bouquet he was so unsure about-- the only thing he knew for certain was that he was no Urie. But he couldn’t just let them leave empty-handed and just as disappointed as they would be if they left with something bad. He picked out as many blood red camellias as the customer told him to, then filled the empty spaces with white alyssum and, after some last-minute contemplation on the customer’s part, some asters and toad lilies. Mutsuki wanted to curl up and die, imagining how much work this person was putting in for a garish display that would surely make their date run the other way.

That said, it wasn’t like he could advise them any better. So he bound the stems, punched the species and quantities of flowers into the register, and posted their invoice. It wasn’t until they left and the store became a ghost town, the afternoon lull setting in before the evening rush, that he even remembered there had been more than one ring of the bell in, and only one out. There was someone he hadn’t helped. And to have been there for so long in silence, they likely needed it. Mutsuki took a deep breath before making his way around the store, looking to bite the bullet and approach his poor second customer.

“I’m so sorry for the wait!” he exclaimed as he approached the short bundle of jet-black hair and clothes sitting on the shop step ladder, in front of the chrysanthemums. “Can I help you find anything?” Only their pale face could be seen through the black, framed by long bangs, a black beanie, and a pillowy-looking black scarf around their neck. Said face didn’t move or flinch at his voice. The customer answered his question with total silence.

“Um… Excuse me?” Mutsuki peeped. One result of a no-win scenario for his scopophobic, introverted self, the customer turned their head to him and he came face to face with their big, round eyes. Mutsuki didn’t know if he was just that anxious, or if they really were smoldering red under the sales floor lights. Then again, their brows and lashes were the same shade of pure white as their skin, up close, Maybe it wasn’t all in his head.

Only when they blinked twice, obscuring their transfixing stare, did Mutsuki have the capacity to notice the two black studs under one of their eyes. They moved slightly up their face, and if they hadn’t, he might not have ever remembered they had an entire face.

“I’m not buying anything,” they said with a smile. Under the corner of their lower lip, another pair of studs, exactly like the ones in their cheek, and on the same side, too. And either they didn’t understand that what they were doing was loitering, or they didn’t expect Mutsuki to do anything about it. “You can go.” Mutsuki hoped he didn’t look as ready to roll over and comply as he felt.

“Um, that’s not… I’m going… I’m going to have to… ask you… to…” They just stared at him, unblinking, with a disarmingly calm smile on their face, as he struggled. His own gaze jumped everywhere but back at their eyes. If he looked up again, he would freeze, completely.

In their lap, they had a drawing pad, open to a pencil sketch of yellow, red, and white chrysanthemums. At least, Mutsuki could guess they were the three different colors in stock, from the shading. “Those are really good,” he caught himself murmuring.

“Thanks!” the loiterer chirped. “I like these ones.” Sure enough, their eyes returned to the exact tube of chrysanthemums that came to mind, upon looking at the sketch. “They look like big explosions with petals. It’s pretty.”

“They… They’re called chrysanthemums,” Mutsuki tried and failed not to squeak. “They kind of do have a sort of… explosion… ish… look. Don’t they?” He didn’t see it. He didn’t see it at all. But he couldn’t help himself. Even a loiterer, he couldn’t summon the backbone to make them stop smiling. The last thing he wanted was to put a frown on that aesthetically beautiful heart-shaped face.

“Chrysanthemums, huh? So that's what those look like.” C-R-Y-S-A-N-T-H-I-M-U-M-S. Mutsuki watched them write it in bubbly, semi-legible print, next to the flowers in their pad. He wondered if he should correct their spelling, but ultimately decided against it. “And what are these ones?” They turned the page backwards. “No point in drawing them good if I won’t even know if a client is asking for them.”

“Heliopsis.” He could tell, even without the sunny yellow petals and the slightly-lighter-than-a-sunflower center colored. The stranger had an eye for detail, to be able to make something known as a ‘false sunflower’ look not quite like a sunflower but similar enough to earn its nickname. Especially when they had no apparent background knowledge of plants.

“And these?” They turned one more page.

“Spider lilies.” Really good spider lilies. Delicate, ribbony petals and spindly pistils that Mutsuki had no trouble identifying. How they made the edges look almost like lace, giving such an illusion of fragility to thick drawing paper… amazing. Just remembering, vaguely, that he was supposed to be telling them not to hang around and draw felt like a crime. “Do you… want me to label your drawings?” Mutsuki asked, on impulse.

“Nope. Just those three. I kinda spent too much time wandering, so that’s all I got done,” they sighed. “I’ll have to come back, another time!” No, no. They didn’t need to do that. But Mutsuki wouldn’t have told that to someone much less intimidating. “What’s your name, so I can find you again?”

“Tooru,” fell out of Mutsuki’s mouth before he even realized he was talking. “So… You came in to draw our flowers?”

“Nope. But it looked like so much fun. I couldn’t help myself.”

“Oh. Then, uh… why _did_ you come in?” Maybe he could help them find something, after all. Or at least have a good excuse for not kicking them out like he still knew, in the back of his mind, he was supposed to.

“Just checking out my new neighbors,” they said with a smile. “Not a candy store, but now that I think about it, it might have been kinda confusing to open one right next to my shop, anyway. Plus, your flowers are so much fun to draw!”

“Um…” Mutsuki had no idea what to say to that. “Thank you,” he hesitantly decided. “So, you...” what was that second thing? He didn’t want them to think he wasn’t interested in what they said. “You have a…” shop. Next to theirs. That might have been confusing if Haise had opened a candy store. _Oh no_.

He was crashing and burning at a conversation with Suzuya Juuzou. Owner and figurehead of Body Candy Tattoo and Piercing. Urie would be homicidal when he learned who came in during his missed shift. And Mutsuki was going to faint. How he didn’t recognize Suzuya, he had no idea. His and Saiko’s go-to bookstore shelved their tattoo and alternative lifestyle magazines close enough to the manga anthologies that he had seen his face a few times, on a few different covers.

“Ah, shitfuck.” Suzuya’s voice pulled Mutsuki out of his wide-eyed staring spell. His eyes were on his phone, his voice completely void of apparent distress despite him cursing. “Looks like I forgot to put down an appointment.” He rolled his eyes. “Better get back before my angry client kills Hanbee.” Quick and clumsy, he hopped up to his feet. “You seem nice,” he said before he left. “I like you, Tooru.”

Mutsuki couldn’t make his mouth form words, still staring at empty space as Suzuya ran out the door. After a few repetitions of ‘Earth to Mucchan…’ from Saiko, he blinked his eyes and shook his head before returning to the counter. There he stayed for the rest of his shift, only a handful of customers breaking up the day and no orders being placed. Between the handful, he watched over Saiko’s shoulder as she played on her PSP and tended to the flowers --his actual job, when their florist decided to come in-- until closing.

Suzuya seemed nice, too. Somewhere in his wandering thoughts, only ten minutes until time to punch out, Mutsuki came to that decision as he counted the evening drawer. And he said he liked him. Mutsuki hadn’t even done anything for him, and he said he liked him. Who would ever do that, Mutsuki had to stop and ask himself. But he couldn’t deny; it made his stomach feel queasy and warm, his head a little light, to think about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shoutout to drew for putting this concept in my ask box forever ago


	2. Patch It Up and Kiss It Better

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: this is the chapter with a little bit of blood and injury

'Really committed to his aesthetic' was a much more apt description of Suzuya's most frequent client than 'badass.' Sure, the whole Japanese Marilyn Manson look must have scared the population of Shinjuku shitless in his youth, but how much whining and how many short appointments went into Uta's sleeve would have made great blackmail material if Uta had anything Suzuya wanted. Were he not so easy to please, thereby giving Suzuya a great deal of freedom with his custom tattoos, Suzuya probably would have refused to do the chest piece he had moved onto now. Besides, as much of a pain as he could be to work with once he was actually in the chair, at least he was a pain for a very short time.

“15 minutes in and no annoying commentary,” Suzuya teased, looming over him, machine in hand and the detailed outline of a raven starting to actually look like a raven over Uta's heart. “Whoever your bird here is for must have really toughened you up, since I did your hand.” Once said raven itself was done, it was going to be surrounded by more of the intricate blackwork that had become Uta's trademark over the years, to potentially work it into another sleeve, down the line. But that would take a while, given there was no room for squirming in those tiny details. “For real, though. You getting about ready to tap out?” So he had an idea how much he could get done, today. Uta, he trusted, at least had the artistic sense to let him finish tracing over his stencil.

“Tap out? This is the first time I've felt something in months,” said Uta. Suzuya was used to the brazenly depressed jokes he tried to pass off as their tattoo session banter. Uta did not appreciate a practical response to them, or any response other than laughter even though he wasn't funny, so Suzuya kept his mouth shut and opted instead to just roll his eyes. “Nah, I'm just kidding. As soon as you're done with the linework, I'm out of here.” That was what Suzuya thought.

“I'm almost done.” After the raven part was outlined, he just had to outline the maybe-transition to his shoulder. Suzuya imagined the delicate blackwork as spindly cirrus clouds among which the raven was flying. When it was done, it would be too solid to be clouds, but he liked the idea. Would that Uta wanted more color. He couldn't vouch for how well they would age compared to blackwork, but he could have carved in some awesome, ethereal clouds. But there was still something rhythmic and calming about tracing the smooth lines and simple shapes, all in the same color, just being able to keep going and going and going until--

“Okie dokie. You're done for the day!” Suzuya chirped, as soon as he had the entire tattoo lined. “Hanbee!” he called over his shoulder. Instantly, his slowly-growing-less-useless apprentice stopped on his way to his own station. Whatever he was going to do there between his handful of clients could wait. “You remember how to see a client out?”

“Yes, sir!”

“How about you wrap this clown for me?” He could use the practice, and Suzuya could use the extra few minutes. Fortunately, Hanbee had no problem agreeing to take over Uta's wound care. Suzuya would see Uta again in two weeks, to start getting those details of his raven onto him. For now, though, he left Uta with Hanbee so he could put on his black coat and comically big pom-pom hat, taking just as long as was necessary to keep an eye and an ear on Hanbee until he had covered everything that could have major consequences if he messed up. He was learning, seeing as he got Uta out the door without an issue.

As soon as he had all his loose ends tied up, he said his 'goodbyes' and 'see you in an hours' to his team and went out into the snow. He used to wander idly around the strip mall, when he had the rare treat that was an entire hour between appointments, never failing to find something fun to get into. So when he did have a goal in mind, like he did today, he knew where to go for everything he was looking for.

That winter was uncharacteristically cold for the city, so he decided to substitute his usual gifts of Yoriko's bakery treats for two to-go containers of the spiciest curry at his and Akira's favorite spot, on his way to :RE for a black coffee and the much less dreary specialty latte of the day. With backpack full of to-go containers, his next and final stop was Peony for Your Thoughts.

“Too-ru!” he singsonged in memorized rhythm with the _ping-pong!_ of the shop door. The store was packed and he quickly spotted Mutsuki, sandwiched between a small mob of customers and a display of Christmas wreaths. He could eat lunch with him when he got a second to clock out, so in the meantime, Suzuya grabbed the stepstool from behind the vacant counter and picked a flower to draw. 

He settled on a tower of white, purple, and two-toned blooms that he didn't know the name of, but they reminded him of little white birds. Whatever they were called, he liked them. Had he never met Mutsuki and started coming over to his work when he had the time, he would have never known how many pretty flowers bloomed in winter. Mutsuki had told him about a handful. The bright, yellow ones next to him were jasmine. According to Mutsuki, they symbolized friendliness and, at one point in time, though they mainly added movement and fragrance to an arrangement in practice, were used to say 'you are cheerful and graceful' to their recipient. Snowdrops, near the counter, stood for hope. Hellebores said 'relieve my anxiety.' 

Mutsuki always apologized to him after a minute of talking about them, but Suzuya had as many fun facts as he could scribbled in every blank spot on his drawings. He knew what a few plants meant in traditional tattoos. Maybe he could use Mutsuki's meanings and symbolism to coax some people into giving him a chance to do hellebores or snowdrops or little bird flowers for a change. Even if he couldn't, he liked hearing Mutsuki talk about them, all excited and smiling and cute, like a puppy staring down a handful of their favorite treat. It was sadder than the concept of black coffee, to hear him apologize for that.

He had the bird-looking flowers outlined when Mutsuki peeked from the other side of the tower at him. It took a 'hi, Juuzou,' to get him to look up from them. Mutsuki looked like he was in the middle of something, a pot of what looked like a type of ivy in his hands. They said their 'hellos' and Mutsuki told him that he liked his cyclamens. So that was what they were.

“You're sweet,” Suzuya said with a big smile, putting down his drawing pad and picking up his backback to trail a step behind Mutsuki, who didn't stop race-walking to where he was going. “I brought coffee and hot curry. Are you taking a break, soon?” It was late midday. He had to be getting a little woozy from lack of food. Anyone who hung out in the shop long enough to observe him knew he didn't take great care of himself, when he could get his usually long to-do list done instead. Maybe it was because his own line of work was not so forgiving of slipping hands, but Suzuya had a hard time seeing the good in that.

“Um...” Mutsuki's smile turned tense and he knit his eyebrows, starting to avert his eyes. “I'll clock out as soon as I transplant this.” Suzuya was going to hold him to that. “Urie needs it for an arrangement so it has to look healthy and it's not _going_ to be healthy for much longer in this pot and Haise is too busy with the customers and--” With a strangled yelp, he walked right into a tower of roses.

Terracotta shattered dusty and a lot messier than glass. Suzuya didn't know that until Mutsuki's pot fell to the floor with a _crash!_ that made the entire shop look towards the sound and freeze. Except for Mutsuki.

Suzuya's eyes followed movement just in time to see Mutsuki drop to his knees and frantically try to save the ivy lying in a pile of soil and shards of the too-small pot. He didn't catch how he did it in the panicked, chaotic movement of Mutsuki's hands, trying to scoop roots and dirt into two salvageable handfuls, but somewhere in that chaos, he flinched back from the pile, holding one hand close to his chest, wincing like he was hurt. It was at the sight of red dripping onto his light green apron that Suzuya took a knee next to him and grabbed his bleeding hand.

“Let me see,” he said calmly, and Mutsuki complied, looking at a wall over his shoulder and going a little ashen in the face as Suzuya turned his palm up and coaxed his fingers away from it so he could take a look. The heavy bleeding almost definitely made it look deeper and nastier than it was, but he had given himself a gash across his hand. Suzuya could see the shapes of a few small terracotta bits lodged in it, and that was without cleaning it up.

“Mutsuki!” exclaimed someone vaguely familiar. Rapid footsteps approached the two of them and Suzuya looked up to see Haise, the owner of Peony for Your Thoughts who Suzuya hadn't deduced how he knew but felt like he did. “Oh my god! Are you okay?! That looks--”

“It's just a cut,” said Suzuya. No need to panic over it, especially when Mutsuki was already too freaked out to even look at it. “Get me your first aid kit and I can patch him up in the bathroom.” Or maybe that wasn't a thing most businesses had several of at their disposal. Haise just stood there and looked at them.

“We have some band-aids. But are you sure he doesn't need a hospital?”

“Nah.” But a band-aid wouldn't cut it either. “We're gonna go next door and get you cleaned up,” he said to Mutsuki, rising from the floor and giving him a hand to help him do the same. “Be right back!” Haise didn't get a chance to say anything before Suzuya took Mutsuki's good hand and led him out of the shop, calm but not wasting his time. He still didn't know it was as minor as he thought it was until he cleaned it.

Hanbee greeted him when they walked in, but Suzuya was too zeroed in on the task at hand to even think to respond as he brought Mutsuki to his station and turned on the sink in the corner of it.

“Gimme your hand again,” he told Mutsuki. Mutsuki obeyed and he ran it under the water. At the first sight of red water circling the drain, Mutsuki looked away again. His hand felt limp and clammy, as Suzuya washed away the blood, soil, and terracotta dust.

“Sorry,” he said. “I just... I... get faint, at the sight of blood.” That explained the pallor and clamminess. “I don't want to pass out on you.”

“It's okay.” Once he could see the cut as it was, not so deep it needed stitches, definitely a few pieces of the pot that needed to be pulled out, he turned off the sink. “Sit down.” He nodded to his chair, right behind where Mutsuki was standing. While Mutsuki did that, he took a seat next to him and started getting supplies off his metal cart, laying what he needed on a tray that he set on the top of it before snapping on a pair of nitrile gloves and taking Mutsuki's hand again. “I'm gonna pull the glass out.”

“Okay-- _haah!”_ Suzuya picked up a pair of tweezers and started to remove the first shard just for Mutsuki to exclaim and pull his hand away. “Sorry! Sorry!” he immediately put his hand back in Suzuya's and said. “Um, do you think... maybe... you could talk to me? It doesn't really matter what about, just...” He needed a distraction. Suzuya could do that.

“Okie dokie.” He took his time, bringing the tweezers back to Mutsuki's hand. “So what was that plant you were carrying? You said you were gonna transplant it?”

“English ivy,” said Mutsuki. “Urie has a Christmas party to arrange for, and they want ivy garlands, but one of our suppliers just doesn't have enough, so we're cultivating our own to make up for what they had to short us... Oh gosh, Urie's gonna _ki-ill me--!”_ Suzuya removed the first shard.

“Hey, hey,” he said to Mutsuki, who was getting squirmy again. There was something kind of cute about his squirming, but he really needed to get patched up, right now. “If anyone's gonna kill you, they have to go through me.” He found another shard to pull out. “Tell me more about the English ivy.”

“Well, it's pretty hardy, but it needs a lot of space to grow in a short period of time. That's why I was transplanting it. As a houseplant, it pours over the pot, but with enough room, it climbs up lattices and walls. Imagine if you had an entire wall of green. It's so _pre-etty!”_ Suzuya pulled out the second shard. “In gardens,”Mutsuki squeaked, trying to compose himself as he kept talking. “You know, it symbolizes, fidelity, marriage, and wedded love.” His voice gradually returned to normal. “When it flowers, it does it in these gorgeous white tendrils, and a sprig of them symbolizes affection. Giving them to someone can also mean you're anxious to please them. I don't know if the berries mean anything, but they also make dark, purplish berries that, I think, look just as nice.”

“Pretty,” said Suzuya, smiling at Mutsuki. “Uh, what about those flowers I was drawing earlier? Cyclamens.” He thought he said it right. “What do those ones mean?” Not that he was bored of ivy. Mutsuki just sounded like he had said all there was to say about it, and he still had one more shard that needed to be pulled out.

“Um, cyclamens...” he trailed off, staring intently at Suzuya like he was deep in thought. “That one stands for timid hope, and sh _-hyyyyness!_ ” Suzuya pulled out the last shard as soon as he started explaining. “ _And--!”_ Mutsuki stopped to take a deep breath before continuing. “Resignation, and goodbye. So, if you know anyone who's quitting their job, now is the season for them. Why not bring the point home with flowers?” He sighed. “How many more pieces do you have to pull out?”

“You're all done,” said Suzuya. He set his tweezers down with the tiny pile of terracotta bits. “Now, lemme just cover up that cut so you don't bleed all over everything.”

“Whoa. That was easier than I thought it would be,” Mutsuki said with a nervous laugh. “You seem to really know what you're doing.”

“Hell yeah.” He did know what he was doing. “I've got certificates in first aid, bloodborne pathogens, and CPR. All my artists and apprentices do.” It was a necessary part of getting licensed, and it was how they showed that they really wanted to work for him, going through the boring technical shit they didn't come to him to learn before he let them near a tattoo machine. Hanbee was the only exception to that trial, seeing as he was a personal care aide --Suzuya's, in fact-- before Suzuya got him into tattooing. He proved himself in his own way, but he had his medical credentials before the two of them met. “In case you ever cut yourself when I'm not here.” He smeared Mutsuki's hand with antibiotic ointment and covered it in a piece of gauze, which he taped into place with a frame of transpore tape. “All better!”

“Thank you,” said Mutsuki. “I'm sorry you had to spend your break dealing with my cut-up hand.” He looked down at said hand, but didn't take it back from Suzuya.

“Nah. It's no trouble.” Suzuya liked to be around Mutsuki. He liked to hear his voice, a soft-spoken, velvety contralto that could lull him to sleep if he were to just sit and listen to it with no task to keep him awake. He liked to look at him, deep green hair, dark skin, and rich brown doe eyes that begged to be drawn and painted. He liked to touch him, soft and warm with surprisingly rough hands, perhaps from all the gardening tools he handled. Even if he had to be pulling ceramic bits out of his hand to make that proximity happen, he liked it. “You should break more pots, so you have to come see me more!” He was kidding about him breaking pots, but if he could figure out how to keep Mutsuki in his chair all day, he wouldn't hesitate. Mutsuki didn't say anything to that, just shifted in his seat a little and frowned at his hand.

Suzuya knew how to hold himself back. He could stop even the most trancelike tattooing session, no matter how much his hand still craved the sensation of bringing the tattoo machine across skin. However, the restraint that kept him from losing his license failed to catch up with him before he picked up Mutsuki's hand and planted a gentle kiss in the middle of his gauze strip. It was just there, and it felt so nice in his hand; he knew it had to feel nice against his lips too. Being covered in gauze, it wasn't quite what his impulse told him it would be, but he could still feel the warmth seeping through the bandage.

When he pulled away and released Mutsuki's hand, Mutsuki only stared at him, wide-eyed with his mouth fallen open. His cheeks were dyed a muted berry red. He sat dead still for a second, not even moving his mouth to speak. 

“I-- Uh--” Once he did compose himself enough to get a sound in, he stumbled over whatever it was he was trying to say. “Sassan is probably worried about me,” he ultimately murmured. “I'd better get going! Thank you, again, for fixing my hand! See you later!” And with that, he hopped up and booked it out of the studio.

“Someone special, sir?” Hanbee asked from his station, next to Suzuya's, as soon as Mutsuki was gone. Suzuya looked over at him, in the middle of dropping his tweezers into an autoclave pouch for whoever was running the machine, that day, at closing.

“Super special!” said Suzuya, grinning big. “That's my new friend from the flower shop I was telling you about!”

“Just a friend?” said Hanbee.

“Yep!” Of course. What else would he--  _ oh yeah.  _ “You're so gross, Hanbee!” he exclaimed, mostly but not completely teasing. Sometimes he forgot that falling in love wasn't just a practical joke people acted out too much for it to be all that funny. “Yeah, no.” Definitely not what Hanbee had in mind. “Anywho, I'm gonna eat some--” Lunch. Oops. 

He had forgotten all about his backpack of curry and coffee. And, looking through said backpack for the bento at the bottom of it, he realized he had forgotten something else: his drawing pad. Running out of time to eat, let alone go next door, he figured he would just have to grab it the next morning. Peony for Your Thoughts would be closed by the time he finished with his last appointment of the day. Hopefully, he remembered to go and get it. Not even he knew how long he would go without his pad if he didn't.

Or maybe he didn't have to remember. It was not his day to close. After a final early-evening appointment that ended just as the sun was starting to go down, he was a free man. Before he could get out the back door, however, Hanbee rushed from the waiting area to the studio, calling his name as he caught up to him.

“Suzuya, sir!” he repeated, a little breathless from sprinting across the studio. “Don't leave, yet! Your friend-- the one who was in here earlier! He's looking for you!”

Sure enough, Suzuya thanked Hanbee for relaying the message and made his way to the waiting area, where, standing by the door, arms crossed over a familiar-looking drawing pad, was--

“Tooru!” Suzuya bolted right to him and swept him off his feet for a split second in a big, twirling hug. “What brings you by?” he chirped upon putting Mutsuki back down. Not that he minded the pleasant surprise. In all honesty, Mutsuki would not have been the first person he fucked up and scared away from him. He would have missed him, if he had done that, earlier.

“Oh... Well... I, uh...” Mutsuki looked just a little bit off to the side, cradling the drawing pad tight, tense. “I found this in front of the cyclamens.” He handed over what was, in fact, Suzuya's forgotten drawing pad. “I would have brought it over earlier, but the evenings get so busy, and Urie disappeared after his lunch, so, um... yeah. I hope you didn't miss it, too much.”

“Yay!” Suzuya took the pad and cheered. “You're the best!” Who ever would be kind enough to wait in his shop with no idea how late he would be done with his appointments, to return his drawing pad to him? He couldn't think of anyone he would do that for, off the top of his head, so he figured it was an awfully nice thing to do.

Not only did Mutsuki go out of his way just to bring it to him; there were flowers sticking out at an angle from the side of the pad. One stem of burgundy hellebore, one purple pansy, a white cyclamen, and a sprig of something with blunt, narrow leaves and white berries.

“Um... anyway!” Mutsuki exclaimed before Suzuya could ask what the sprig was. “I should, uh, get going! You have a good night!” And with that, he made a valiant attempt to bolt out of the studio. Out the door, however, was as far as he got. He hurried down the sidewalk like a nervous prey animal, but he wasn't that hard to catch.

“Hey, Tooru!” Suzuya called after him. On impulse, he reached out and grabbed Mutsuki's upper arm. That stopped Mutsuki in his tracks. “What do these mean?” He turned Mutsuki around and held up his drawing pad, to where the flowers were at Mutsuki's eye level. Hellebore, he was decently sure he remembered. Cyclamens were the ones Mutsuki told him about today, but he had been a little occupied with his hand full of ceramic to retain everything he said. The other two, he had no idea.

“Well...” Mutsuki looked down, a little, but Suzuya had zero intention of letting him leave his cryptic message a mystery. Knowing how much Mutsuki knew about this stuff, it had to be a message. “Hellebore is... 'relieve my anxiety.'” His hands went down to fidget at the hem of his sweater. “Pansies... purple ones, anyway... are 'you occupy my thoughts.” He had to take a moment of silence before he continued. “Cyclamens are, obviously, coming from me, shyness, and uh... timid... hope.” He took an extra-long pause, staring at the sprig of berries.

“And what's this one?” Suzuya asked, taking just the sprig out and holding it up while he brought the rest of his pad down.

“Um... mistletoe...” Mutsuki's voice cracked. “Mistletoe... is...” His sweater was definitely going to have two distinct stretched spots where it overlapped the crotch of his slacks when he was done aggressively wringing it. “'Kiss me.'” Once it was out, Mutsuki immediately jumped to his own defense over it. “I--! I don't know why I put it in there! I just--! It was there, and I--!” In the midst of his panicking, he stopped and took a deep breath. “I don't... I don't know exactly how I feel about you, but... That is... something I think about doing... with you.” He broke up his explanation with a nervous laugh. “Okay, this is a lot weirder than it was in my head. Really, I'm so sorry, I don't know why I thought--” 

“Can I kiss you now?” Suzuya asked, point blank. Mutsuki went quiet. He didn't say anything back, staring at Suzuya like a deer just before it got hit by a car, his hands frozen and pulling his sweater taut. After what felt like a long silence between them, he answered with the tiniest nod Suzuya had ever seen, but a nod. Not another second passed before Suzuya took hold of Mutsuki's sweater collar and pulled him down close enough to reach.

Mutsuki's lips were nothing like his hands, just as warm, but petal soft. Without any sugar in it, green tea tasted like a mouthful of grass clippings, but that softness, Suzuya decided, made up for the earthy, bitter hint of Mutsuki's coffee substitute creeping onto his tongue. Another second, and Mutsuki relaxed against him. Suzuya took that as permission to press closer, enough so that the feverish burn of Mutsuki's cheeks radiated palpably from his face and he could feel the pillowy bulk of Mutsuki's sweater through his own shirt and coat. He couldn't help but smile into it, laughing as they slowly pulled apart.

“So, um...” Mutsuki murmured after a moment of quiet, a tiny trying-not-to smile on his face. “I'll see you tomorrow?” Suzuya nodded. He had a rehearsal that night, otherwise he would follow Mutsuki wherever he had been trying to escape to so fast. For now, though, he stood up on his toes and kissed Mutsuki's cheek before saying his 'goodbyes' and heading off in the opposite direction.


	3. Special Things

Mutsuki should have known something was up when the lights were on and the sign out front read 'open,' before he so much as clocked in. Haise had weekends off, so it couldn't have been him. Even when he did show up for the morning shift, Urie seldom opened the shop or did anything he didn't deem his problem, just turned on the light in the back and got working on arrangements in solitude. Shirazu helped run the shop when there weren't any fresh flowers coming in, but the pickup wasn't parked behind the shop, on Mutsuki's way to the back door. 

Sure enough, the sales floor was done all wrong. Everywhere he looked, the beautiful, delicate spring colors were consumed by red and pink. Roses, peonies, lilies, hyacinths, they were the right flowers, but only in those unseasonably festive colors, and far too many roses compared to every other flower they were supposed to have stocked. The question was whether or not the arrangement was on purpose. He went behind the counter, put on his apron, and opened up the shop email on the computer connected to the register. It was then that Saiko appeared next to him, looking awfully pleased with herself. 

“Hey, Mucchan,” she said in a slow singsong.

“Hi.” Something was going on. He wasn't sure what, yet. But something was definitely going on. He could hear it in her voice, see it written all over her tired smirk. He didn't know how he felt about that. “Um... What's with the color palette?” he looked up from the computer and asked. “Valentine's was over a month ago.”

“What?” Saiko raised her eyebrows in feigned surprise and looked over his shoulder at the calendar. “Huh. So it was,” she said with a half-smile. “You and Mr. 'Inked' Coverboy could’ve fooled me.” For a second, Mutsuki just looked at her, confused. Another second, though, and his face felt hot.

“I’m going to kill you, Saiko. I am going to kill you,” he muttered with his face in his hands, elbows on the counter. “You’re lucky I have a wedding consultation, today.” So he could explain away all the romantic love in the air and on the shelves. “Otherwise your dead body would be wrapped up in the fridge right now.” Right behind all the actual in-season flowers she didn’t take out.

“Wedding consultation?” said Saiko. “A little soon, don’t you think? I mean, you haven’t even asked the guy out yet!” Mutsuki shot her a ‘don’t test me’ look. “Geez, I was just kidding!” She put her hands up a little in defense. “Tell me, though, what flowers were you thinking, for the wedding you’re definitely planning in your head?”

“None!” He could hear all the ways his panic could be misread by her, but he couldn't compose himself. “Because I’m not!” Though casablanca lilies would frame that black hair and beautiful face so well. In his defense, did it have to be a wedding? Could they not find a more relaxed and ambiguous excuse to pair two beautiful things?

“Yeah right. Sure.” Saiko leaned over the counter on one elbow, her cheek resting in her hand. “Those cute little sticky notes you left on the counter are just ideas for your matching tattoos.”

“Actually, those were for your funeral.” He picked up one of the green sticky notes, in the shape and print of a frog, still stuck next to the computer. “See?” he said, showing it to her. “The lilies stand for celebration.”

“Oh, that’s cold, Mucchan!” she gasped. “Anyway, I think yours should be a tramp stamp. You did say Juuzou drew good flowers, so…”

“ What have we here,” Tooru said, scrolling through their inbox. “An email from the brides-to-be. Guess I have to ignore you while I confirm their appointment for this morning. How unfortunate.”

“ You know you’d get one if Juuzou offered,” Saiko leaned in closer and whispered in his ear.

“ Stop!” Ever so gently, he touched her shoulder and pushed her what would be away, if he could bring himself to truly push her.

“Okay, okay,” she finally rolled her eyes and said. “But seriously, I'm just trying to help.” Mutsuki found himself hard-pressed to find a way that so many red roses in late March helped anyone. “To be honest, I'm running out of ideas. It would help if you weren't such a repressed tsundere mother--”

“Wait, wait wait,” said Mutsuki, sitting bolt upright and not even pretending to look at the screen, anymore. “Ideas for what?” She had been teasing, no, _harassing_ him about Suzuya since the day he broke that pot of ivy. He knew she didn't bother having the discretion to stop when Suzuya paid a visit to the shop and was close enough to hear her, but if she had been doing that on purpose, well, Mutsuki didn't know what he would do about it, but he didn't like the idea of it. 

“To get you and Juuzou together, of course,” Saiko explained. So Mutsuki wasn't just being paranoid when he accused her, a few times in the past few months, of trying to embarrass him in front of Suzuya. “Since you're obviously getting  _ nowhere  _ by yourself.” It seemed awfully bold of her to assume that he wanted to get anywhere with Juuzou that he hadn't. “You'd better make an effort when he comes to see you, today. After I went through all this trouble to set the mood, it's pretty much the only way to repay me.” 

“Make an effort to do what, exactly?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. He had a feeling he knew already, or at least had an idea, having peeked over at some of the sappier manga she liked to read. But his latent masochistic streak apparently wanted to know exactly what uncomfortable shoujo manga moment she was trying to orchestrate for him.

“To ask him out!” Saiko stood up straight and all but squealed like it was the most glaring, obvious thing in the world. “Don't play naïve with me, Mutsuki.” She crossed her arms, an unimpressed look on her face. “You could cut the tension between you two with a knife, and I'm not standing idly while you break your own heart, waiting for him to make a move like a helpless damsel in distress.”

“There is no tension!” 

“Oh, please. You don't bring a guy cupcakes at work, spend your break hanging out with him, and kiss him on the cheek when you leave  _ every few days _ unless you're in love.” Yes, you did. Suzuya was living proof. “But it's been months. If he hasn't taken the next step yet, he's waiting for you to.”

“You're horrible.” And with that, Mutsuki opened up the point-of-sale software, something Saiko had been too busy redecorating to do, and left her to man the counter while he found something to do away from her. Avoidance, hiding, had always been something he was good at. He could have avoided her until lunch, perhaps even his entire shift if he really made an effort at it. If it wasn't for Suzuya. 

He came in almost an hour after lunch and couldn't stay long, lamenting that he missed Mutsuki's break but still hoping to get some drawings in that day; seeing Mutsuki was just a small bonus and he accepted that. Mutsuki had petals to sweep, but he couldn't help but stop and stare over Suzuya's shoulder, every time his caretaking brought him over to what he was drawing. Peonies, at one point, big and pink with an almost fluffy quality that Suzuya translated to paper as if it was easy. Then he moved on to the hyacinths, more pink and yet, much to Mutsuki's relief, he didn't comment on the rosy interior design of the entire store. Today, he didn't stay much longer than those two drawings, but before he left, he got up from his commandeered step ladder and pulled Mutsuki aside by his arm, on Mutsuki's way to go and make a fresh batch of sugar water in the shop's backroom. 

“Yo, Tooru,” he said. “I've got a show tonight, at Helter Skelter. It's free, so you don't need a ticket or anything, but I'd get there before it's packed.” He dug a slip of paper out of his hoodie pocket and pushed it into Mutsuki's hand. “I hope I see you there!” He then kissed Mutsuki's cheek, released him, and went back next door without any more explanation of what show he wanted Mutsuki to come to.

'Judgment's Blade,' 9:00 o'clock, was messily hand-written on the slip. Suzuya had mentioned going or having to go to 'rehearsal' several times in the last few months, and talked about how excited he was about the 'show' he had coming up, but he never went into any more detail than that about it. For all Mutsuki knew, he could be in a band, or perhaps 'Judgment's Blade' was the name of a community theatre production, or maybe it was the theme of an art show. Either way, Mutsuki was going, and he couldn't in good conscience go empty-handed. 

“Decided to come crawling back to me, huh, Mucchan?” Saiko teased when, at the end of his shift, he came up to the counter with a bundle of flowers. “What did your knight in shining face piercings say to you, to make you love me again? I saw he gave you something.” He did not like the self-satisfied smile on her face, but he willed himself not to care. It was only polite to give a performer flowers after a show, and especially in his line of work, he had no excuse not to do that for Suzuya. “What _did_ he give you, anyway? Must have been pretty great, to warrant a bunch of ro-ses!” Her singsonging did nothing to help his nerves. They were the traditional flower to give for this kind of thing. She was the one being weird. But what if she wasn't?

“Not your business,” he still managed to say.

“Okay, okay,” Saiko huffed, slowly typing up the details of his invoice. A split second of quiet, though, and she stopped typing with a comically loud gasp. “He asked you out, didn't he?!” she all but screamed. _There were customers around!_ God, he wanted to shush her so bad, but at the same time, he really didn't want to make her feel like she was right. For one, she wasn't. For another... he didn't know why he hated it so much, but the suggestion that he wanted to _go out_ with Suzuya made him feel sick. “Oh my god, he did!” Saiko exclaimed. “And you said yes!”

“Please, just ring me up.” He wanted to say he was going to be late, but that seemed like a double-edged sword. She might actually respect that, unlike anything else he could say to make her finish checking him out without any more grief. But then she would almost definitely get even more of the wrong idea, considering what she had already taken and run with. 

“Ooh, _Mucchan...”_ she said with that same awful smile. “I knew it! You _do_ have a hot date!” At least she was still ringing up the flowers, even as she giggled at him. “I never saw you as the kinda guy to like men with tattoos.” It had only recently gotten warm enough for Suzuya to show them, but they weren't unnoticeable. He had a lot of them on his left forearm, from his hand to his elbow, maybe even further up. On his throat, he wore a bold pair of wings. “That'll be ¥1400.”

“Thank you.” He tried not to sound to exasperated. That was the point of politeness after all, to still treat people with decency no matter how done you were with them. “You have a good night, Saiko.” 

“I know _you'll_ have a good night, Mucchan.” She handed over his roses, stems bound in red ribbon. “Just remember, no tramp stamps on the first date!” Mutsuki didn't dignify that one with anything more than 'bye,' before hurrying out the door.

Helter Skelter, he learned a little too late, was not the kind of venue where patrons brought flowers for the live performers. Plain and unassuming on the outside, the bare brick walls and dim lighting inside were reminiscent of a Medieval dungeon. Fleetwood Mac played softly from the speaker system, but the packed house of patrons didn't look like any old school rock-and-roll fans Mutsuki knew. Most of them had their music taste emblazoned across their shirts. Mutsuki found himself too afraid of making a troop of loud, roughhousing men in leather jackets and combat boots angry, to stare at them long enough to read the difficult fonts on their band t-shirts, but he guessed they were band t-shirts. 

Just realizing that he was the only person not wearing head-to-toe black, sticking out like a moth on a soot-covered tree in his daffodil yellow sweater, made him feel instantly out of place, if not like he had an invisible target on his back. A target for what, his rational brain had no idea, but he felt it just the same. Would that Suzuya was out there with the crowd, there to hold his hand and tell him he was doing fine, rather than wherever he was, getting ready to perform. At least, after a few minutes, he wasn't standing there terrified _and_ competely alone.

“Tooru!” a deep voice called from the end of the bar. At 6'3, Suzuya's apprentice, Hanbee easily towered high enough over the crowd to wave at him. Though he wasn't sure if he wanted him to come to him or was just saying 'hello,' Mutsuki had no idea what else to do but cautiously weave through the excitable headbangers over to him. “Suzuya will be so happy to see you!” Hanbee said when he made it close enough to talk. “What lovely flowers!”

“Thanks,” Mutsuki peeped. “You think Juuzou will like them?” From the moment he walked into the bar, he stopped being so sure about his choice of gift. That said, it came as a relief that Hanbee nodded.

“Oh, he'll love them,” he insisted. “So... is this your first time here?” Ouch. As if Mutsuki didn't already know he looked like he didn't belong. 

“Yeah.” He knew it was that obvious, but it still stung a little, to hear it from someone else. “But I'm excited to see Juuzou.” Even though he still didn't know what he had come to watch him do.

“I get that. Honestly, it's not really my scene, but Suzuya plays here a lot, so I like to come and support him when I can.” _Suzuya plays here a lot._ So perhaps this was a concert. There was a slightly raised stage area, against the back wall, amps and a standing mic towards the front, a drum set towards the back. Mutsuki wondered what kind of music Suzuya was going to play, if he was a solo act or in a band, if the micophone was his or if he played an instrument. “Can I get you a drink?” Hanbee interrupted his train of thought to ask. “Itori makes great cocktails.”

“Um...” A drink might calm his nerves. He didn't want to be a burden to Hanbee, but he also didn't want to offend him by turning his offer down. “Well...” He took a quick look at the drink menu propped up on the bar. “If you really don't mind, I'll try a 'Sleepy Hollow.'” He didn't drink much or often, but he knew that the drinks he liked were always on the bitter and aromatic side, so it at least wouldn't be bad. And a single drink seemed like the best compromise between the two anxieties battling it out in his head while Hanbee just smiled at him and ordered. 

More people kept filing into the bar, and Hanbee showed him to a spot toward the farthest corner from the stage as it started to get really packed and the house lights went down. According to him, 'the pit' was an experience better saved for when he wasn't in such heat-trapping clothes and crushable footwear. As the stage lights grew brighter and the soft rock music faded out, Hanbee also gave him a pair of silicone earplugs, saying that Suzuya had forgotten to give them to him, but that he really should wear them. By the time Suzuya and three other band members stepped onto the stage, just as heavily clad in black as their audience, the entire bar welcoming them with more roaring and screaming than applause, Mutsuki still didn't know what he was getting into, but Hanbee made it very clear he was getting into something. Of what, he hadn't the foggiest clue, but a big part of him was, as the human mountain of a drummer tapped their drumsticks together, scared.

Mutsuki barely had time to ask himself where he knew the blonde guitarist from before they slammed their guitar strings and the concussive intro to their first song hit him like a sledgehammer square to his chest. Drums and bass hummed throughout his entire body, as if his raw, flayed body was being played like strings and heads. He could feel his every nerve vibrating when a high, bloodcurdling, almost animal shriek pierced through the wall of sound and tore the flesh from his bones. As he recovered the use of his beaten-numb senses, he slowly realized that the shrieking came from Suzuya, standing at the front of the stage with the mic in his hands.

He had no hope of understanding the lyrics, but once Suzuya got going, Mutsuki couldn't take his eyes off him. Only every few words came out comprehensible, but the things he could do with his voice! Who needed to enunciate when one could effortlessly glissando from a glass-shattering screech to a guttural growl that belonged more to a tiger than it did to a tiny human? Even though he had no intention of going and listening to whatever band his t-shirt was for or buying a single heavy metal album in his life, he could appreciate that it probably took the same power and control as that of a great opera singer, to do that. 

And his stage presence! Mutsuki never ceased to be in awe at how Suzuya could always command a room, but here, so deep in a vehement, fierce abandon Mutsuki had only seen glimmers of in his eyes when he deescalated an argument with one of his less diligent clients or glared silently at a loudly self-proclaimed 'autism mom' venting to her friend at the table behind them at :RE, he had the all-consuming gravity and magnitude of a black hole. There was something really, really beautiful about this Suzuya, screaming, jumping, and headbanging his heart out, raw and vulnerable yet so powerful that he had an entire bar of scary-looking men thrashing along to the rhythm he set. Musically, it might not have been Mutsuki's taste, but the experience moved him to where all he could do was stare in rapture and awe at the stage.

He had no idea how long Judgment's Blade played, but the only thing that broke his watching trance was when Suzuya stepped back from the microphone to singalmost every chorus and a few refrains. The experience of his first metal concert would haunt Mutsuki for a long, long time, but Suzuya's melodic singing voice was haunting in an entirely different way. Pure was the only word Mutsuki could come up with to describe it. Pure and clear as the chiming of a bell, crystalline notes ringing through the bar as if he was singing in a cathedral.

Mutsuki forgot to fear standing out among the crowd. He got an entire set and then an encore to pull himself together, but when Suzuya concluded the show, for real, he clapped until he couldn't feel his hands. When his heart started beating so fast and when his breathing grew so heavy, he had no idea, but he felt like he had just swam 200 meters and been dried out in an old-fashioned clothes wringer. He didn't mind, though. If Suzuya invited him to another concert, he would accept the invitation.

While the band took their equipment off the stage and presumably put it back in whatever vehicle they transported it in, Hanbee chattered with him about the show and answered the shallower of his questions about why Suzuya chose to play death metal with just a few bars of melody, of the many kinds of music he clearly had the voice for. Once the stage was clear, Suzuya bolted directly to Hanbee, eyes lighting up and a smile playing from ear to ear across his face when he caught sight of Mutsuki sitting next to him. 

“You came!” he exclaimed. Before Mutsuki could even say 'hi,' let alone give a proper reply to that, Suzuya caught him in a spine-crushing bear hug that left him breathless for a solid few seconds after he let go. “I hoped you would.” 

“Wouldn't miss it,” Mutsuki said with a smile. “Thank you so much for inviting me!” For a second, the two of them went quiet. That was when Mutsuki finally remembered the bouquet of flowers he had set down on the bar, next to his emptied drink. “I, uh, I brought these, for you.” He picked them up and handed them over. When he had picked them out, he was so excited to give them to him, but Saiko's teasing started to ring in his head and now that he was actually giving them to him, he wondered if he was saying the wrong thing. Suzuya, however, snatched them from him before he could do anything about that.

“Ooh! They're so pretty!” Suzuya took a deep sniff of the bouquet. “I love it!” He got up on his toes and kissed Mutsukis cheek. “What do all the flowers mean?” He looked up at Mutsuki with round eyes and a thrilled grin. Mutsuki wished he could take a photo of that incredible smile, but did he have to ask him in front of Hanbee and whoever else might be around? He didn't know exactly what he had to be embarrassed about, but Mutsuki found himself clammy and tongue-tied. 

“I... uh...” What was wrong with him?! He had done this before, so why did it feel like he couldn't breathe, let alone speak?! A heavy weight sank into the pit of his stomach and he felt sick, trying to make an answer come up. Of all times to be so anxious, why now?! Why did he have to--

“Tell me in private?” Suzuya asked. “I know the bestest spot where no one can hear!” It did sound good, to get out of the crowded bar. After giving it a moment, Mutsuki nodded. “Yay!” Suzuya hopped up and down as he cheered. “Come on, let's go!” He held his flowers tight in one hand and grabbed Mutsuki's hand with the other. They slipped out of the bar through the back entrance, into a parking lot where a white van was still parked, right next to a short black motorcycle.

“If you want, we can go someplace more walkable,” Suzuya said as he swung off his backpack and pulled out one black coverall-looking garment. “But I forget stuff a lot, so I keep an extra everything in the tank bag.” He draped the coverall over his flower arm and used his free hand to open up said bag, tossing Mutsuki a motorcycle helmet and holding another like a basketball under his free arm. “You’ll fit into my spares!”

“Um…” Mutsuki held the spare helmet in both hands, looked at Suzuya, at the motorcycle, at the open tank bag, and then back at him. “Okay,” he ultimately said with a tiny, nervous smile. Once he put his helmet on, Suzuya handed him a suit, gloves, and boots before getting into his own gear, shutting his flowers and Mutsuki's shoes in the tank bag, and hopping onto the bike. He gave Mutsuki a little nod, as if to say 'get on!' Tentatively, Mutsuki complied.

Mutsuki's first ride on the back of a motorcycle brought a violent flutter of excitement to the pit of his stomach as he, in his suit of gear that felt so much heavier than it looked, climbed up behind Suzuya and held onto him tight. They started moving and his heart stopped beating for a full second. He didn't know he was holding his breath until Suzuya pulled them out of the parking lot and the sudden acceleration knocked the air out of him.

They tore a few miles down the same street as Helter Skelter, past the strip mall and onto the highway for what felt like forever and no time at once. Every stop felt like he was going to get thrown over the handlebars. Every turn felt like he was going to fall. But Suzuya didn't feel the need to slow down or make softer turns, and he knew what he was doing, so Mutsuki tried to keep reminding himself of that while he held onto him with a grip he didn't know he had the strength for.

Terrifying as the experience was, especially when they got off the highway and onto a network of narrow streets in an area Mutsuki knew nothing about except that every few seconds there seemed to be a turn, Suzuya made it feel safe to be scared. For someone so small, he felt so solid to cling to. His posture didn't shift in any palpable way, no matter how hard Mutsuki panicked and squeezed him. When Mutsuki managed to focus more on him than how fast it felt like they were going, he could feel his ribs expand with his breath, slow and deep as if meditating rather than motorcycling. When it felt way too fast or like too sharp a turn, Mutsuki resolved to close his eyes and try matching his own breath with Suzuya's.

Suzuya stopped the bike at a tall, dark, graffiti-plastered building that looked like some kind of office complex. No other vehicle was parked around it and no lights shined out the windows, but Suzuya waited until they were more than halfway up the rusty fire escape to tell him the building was abandoned. Mutsuki's first instinct was to go back down and leave, for they weren't supposed to be there. His second thought, however, was that Suzuya wasn't a reckless man. If he wasn't afraid to go up to the building's rooftop, then Mutsuki didn't need to be afraid to follow him. And oh, was he glad he followed him.

He had never seen Tokyo from the top of a high-rise, before. Never been so close to the cloudy night sky or able to watch all the colorful lights of cars and buildings and people all sparkling at once like veins of glitter. “Wow...” he couldn't help but breathe, looking out over the parapet in awe.

“Here, sit with me!” Suzuya chirped, a few feet away and sitting on the parapet. As afraid as he was of falling off the edge, Mutsuki took a seat beside him. “This a better place to tell me about them?” said Suzuya. He kicked his feet over the edge and held his flowers in his lap. Truth be told, Mutsuki had been too busy trying to climb up all the building's stairs without looking ready to die, to notice he had brought them.

“Well...” He stared at the bouquet, mostly roses but with a few others he couldn't help the compulsion to mix in. “The roses are sort of... what you to bring to... you know... concerts and that kind of thing. Keep in mind, I had no way of knowing Judgment's Blade was a death metal band,” he explained with a nervous laugh. “The red is for respect and courage.” He respected that Suzuya had the guts to get up and perform in front of a crowd. “Pink hyacinth stands for play.” Be it playing a game or playing music, he figured it was appropriate. “Amaryllis is pride and splendid beauty.” The perfect symbol for Suzuya himself, for he had a great deal of both. “And sweet pea has another, kind of sad meaning too, but tonight, it means 'thank you for a lovely time.'”

“Aww! Tooru!” Suzuya smiled at him and hugged his bouquet close. “I'll protect them with my life!” He was so sweet; hemlock would have been even better than roses. He would have probably appreciated the poisonous flowers once used to carry out executions, and he would certainly be the death of poor Mutsuki. 

After a minute of quiet, Suzuya set his flowers aside and scooched closer to Mutsuki. He picked up one of Mutsuki's hands in both of his, sandwiching it between his ice cold palms and holding it there. Mutsuki rested his head on Suzuya's shoulder. “This is nice,” said Suzuya. “I like coming here, when the day's been too loud.” Mutsuki could see why. Even the loudest of Tokyo's urban clamor sounded faint, as high up as they were. 

“Thank you for bringing me,” he said with a small smile. He didn't understand what was wrong with a friend taking him to do something they liked. Had Suzuya pulled up on his bike and said they were going wherever Mutsuki wanted, they would have never gotten anywhere. It took away the agony of wondering if Suzuya was enjoying himself in his company, because he would definitely enjoy something he chose to do, and it felt so close and intimate and special, to be let into Suzuya's life like he had been tonight. Suzuya's music was special to him. His secret rooftop was special to him. And he picked Mutsuki, of all people, to share those special things with. “I've never been anywhere like this, before.” Or been to a death metal concert. Or been on a motorcycle. And he never would have, without Suzuya. 

They stayed there, Mutsuki's hand in Suzuya's hands and his head on Suzuya's shoulder, for a tranquil while, intermittently breaking the quiet by talking. By the time either of them dared look at the time, it was later than Mutsuki had ever stayed out in his life. Suzuya admitted to taking a while to learn new directions, and Mutsuki feared taking a bus alone at night, so Suzuya offered to let him spend the night at his place. For once without hesitation, Mutsuki accepted. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> drew forever ago: and it’s true that juuzou does have a couple of tattoos on his back but they’re kind of small and mostly unnoticeable
> 
> me, pretending to listen: so like two face piercings, a full patchwork sleeve, and a big ol pair of wings in literally the second most noticeable/hardest to conceal location possible gotcha


End file.
